Painting by Philip R. Perkins (1914-1968)

From a small town in west Tennessee, Philip Perkins became an abstract painter widely acknowledged for his work. He is best known for his geometric, cubist influenced work of the forties. While most abstract art used flat unshaded color areas, Perkins shaded geometric forms through deepening colors to give the work more body and a sense of rhythm. During the fifties, his work became more abstract expressionist in style with more spontaneous brush strokes and less distinct forms. It was during the fifties that he began a series of religious work in a semi-abstract style. By the late sixties, his paintings had become more hard edge abstract through the use of bold shapes and the heavy application of paint with the pallet knife. Philip Perkins was born in 1907 in Waverly, Tennessee. He studied at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee from 1925 to 1926 and at the Chicago Art Institute from 1926 to 1931. Perkins left Paris in 1940 and moved to New York City where he shared a studio with Yves Tanguy. In 1947 he participated in the International Surrealist Exhibition, Galerie Maeght, Paris, France. Perkins returned to Nashville in 1948 to teach at the University of Tennessee at Nashville. Emily Genauer, a renowned art critic from New York, selected his painting DEBRIS OF SUMMER to be included in her book "Best of Art," a survey of the best contemporary paintings that was published in 1948. Also included was work by Yves Tanguy, Marc Chagall, Henry Varnum Poor, Stuart Davis, Walt Kuhn, and Max Weber. She describes the Perkins painting by saying, In 1953, after a visit to Epiphany Mission Episcopal Church and Garden in Sherwood, Tennessee, Perkins offered to paint a new altarpiece for the church a gift. After months of work, the completed triptych was installed and presented to the church on Easter, 1954. The triptych depicted the baptism of Christ and was painted in a style reminiscent of El Greco. A fire in 1960 destroyed the church and the painting. Perkins returned to Paris to live and paint in 1959. In 1960, during his one-man exhibition at the Galerie Clert, Paris, the prominent European art critic Barnet D. Conlan wrote a series of articles on Perkins that was published in European and American publications. Conlan wrote that, "Unlike many abstract artists of recent times, Perkins has had a long training in figurative art . . . He thus acquired an intimate acquaintance with modern French art and with the tradition from which it springs. It is this, which has enabled him to make a synthesis of both tendencies in a style that is neither abstract nor figurative, but a new compound possessing the qualities of both. And because of this, one might say he is one of the most advanced painters in Paris at the present moment." In 1961 Perkins again returned to Nashville to live. He died there of cancer in 1970 at the age of 63.